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After breathlessly covering the Trump-Russia collusion theory for years, CNN tried to skip past Wednesday’s breaking news about Michael Flynn related to the since-debunked narrative — but critics say that’s par for the course.
Top Obama administration officials — including ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who is now a CNN analyst, and others working with then-Vice President Joe Biden — purportedly requested to “unmask” the identity of the former national security adviser during the presidential transition period, according to a list of names made public by Republican senators on Wednesday. The DOJ had been reviewing the unmasking of U.S. officials as part of its broader examination of the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.
CNN host Jake Tapper didn’t even mention it in the Wednesday’s edition of his show “The Lead,” which began shortly after the news broke. The story wasn’t mentioned on the cable news channel, or on its website, within the first three hours after the bombshell story hit.
When CNN finally covered the story they downplayed it, saying Clapper and other Obama-era officials handled it correctly. “Politics plays a huge role in why this is now a story,” senior justice correspondent Evan Perez told viewers.
After breathlessly covering the Trump-Russia collusion theory for years, CNN all but ignored Wednesday’s breaking news.
CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The network’s slow-footed coverage is a stark contrast to its relentless pursuit of the story before Special Counsel Robert Mueller put the collusion theory to bed in April 2019. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, CNN devoted 26 percent of its total news coverage to the Trump-Russia collusion theory from Election Day in 2016 until April 19, 2019.
CNN’s in-house media pundit Brian Stelter talked about the Russian probe so many times that a montage of his comments about it recently went viral. The network’s national political reporter Maeve Reston even admitted on air that Russia was “all we talk about at CNN.”
Along the way, the Washington Post’s media critic Erik Wemple scrutinized CNN for both its reportage and its unwillingness to acknowledge problems with its coverage of the infamous Steele dossier.
After Mueller’s report was issued, CNN President Jeff Zucker defended his network, telling The New York Times he was “entirely comfortable” with their work and that they are “not investigators.”
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Trump’s reelection campaign even filed a libel lawsuit against CNN in March for publishing “false and defamatory” statements about seeking Russia’s help.
Wednesday’s unmasking documents came just a day after Biden told ABC News’ “Good Morning America” that he knew “nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn,” and called the topic a “diversion” from the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden is the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, so even if CNN gives the unmasking short shrift, critics say it’s telling that the network wouldn’t cover the fact that the documents contradict his recent comment.
“With James Clapper as one of many former Obama officials either on their payroll or serving as beloved guests, CNN has assumed the rhetorical fetal position with this declassification,” NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck told Fox News.
“CNN will try to either obfuscate its meaning, memory hole it, downplay it as above board, or continue bashing those raising questions as unconcerned about the coronavirus,” Houck added. “Thankfully, none of that will work because the American people are now armed with the facts. The Facts First network has embarrassed itself for years.”
“The Facts First network has embarrassed itself for years.”
— Curtis Houck
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Clapper speculated on CNN in 2017 that Trump was a Russian “asset,” but the president recently implied he was in cahoots with the network all along.
“I understand Clapper, he gets a couple of bucks from CNN and Jeff Zucker and that den of thieves over there, they tell him at CNN and MSDNC, they tell him exactly what to say,” Trump said last week on “Fox & Friends.”
The unmasking concerns events between the November 2016 election and Inauguration Day 2017. Unmasking occurs after U.S. citizens’ conversations are incidentally picked up in conversations with foreign officials who are being monitored by the intelligence community.
The U.S. citizens’ identities are supposed to be protected if their participation is incidental and no wrongdoing is suspected. However, officials can determine the U.S. citizens’ names through a process that is supposed to safeguard their rights.
Critics noticed CNN’s delay in coverage and took to Twitter:
Fox News’ Brooke Singman and David Spunt contributed to this report.
